


All That Was Me Is Gone

by ossseous (ozean)



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Blood and Gore, College, Death, Demisexual Raphael, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pansexual Simon Lewis, Sexuality, Vampires, Vampires - freeform, Warning: I haven't read the books and I have no desire to
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-08-15 01:00:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8036152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozean/pseuds/ossseous
Summary: AU Where Raphael sort of stumbles on Simon's dead body and decides to make him into a vampire.  He may or may not come to regret that decision in the future.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I wanted to do my own kind of vampire that was made up from all the tropes/folklore I personally like, so they likely wont be very similar to the vampires in canon. Also, general shout out to [samyazaz](http://samyazaz.tumblr.com/), friendly neighborhood phlebotomist who isn't even in this fandom but excitedly answered all my weird questions about blood.

The night of, well, it was its own story.  Mostly just hazy, uncoordinated memories of flashing lights accompanied by the heavy, pulsing thrum of a bass beat that rocked and echoed through his bones.

The headache he’d been sporting since earlier in the day refused to let up.  No matter how many extra strength pain killers he took, it persistently clung to him like it was his younger cousin at their family reunion.  And they were the scary strong ones, the kind he was fairly certain were gradually destroying his liver or stomach or something equally bad sounding.  But Clary grinned at him with bright excitement as she bounced around on the dance floor and Simon, perhaps perpetually unable to say no to her, didn’t even dream of leaving her there alone.

So he turned to the bar.  He entirely had the intention of getting a nice, cold glass of water to knock back some more Aspirin (and if he ended up pressing the glass to the spot at his temple that seemed to throb the most, who could blame him?) 

But then he saw her.

Just sitting at the bar like his life was some kind of pop song music video, he chanced upon one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.  Long legs crossed demurely at the knee, she let the spike of her heel hook steadfastly on the rung of her stool.  It was almost like a pose for a painting.  Clary had pulled him along to enough art museums for him to know the elements of art, how a master could draw the observer’s eye just where the artist wanted it with line or space or some other of the million words she listed.  But in that moment, Simon wasn’t sure if the woman was subject or the master. 

She rested the sharp point of her elbow on the counter, turning away from the man at her side to look out lazily amongst the crowd.  He got lost in the way the lights casted over her in a neon blue glow, refracting in delicate little flakes of light off the glasses and empty bottles that surrounded her.

Distantly he was aware that someone flitted around her, cleaning all the empties up, but Simon couldn’t look away from her or the way her foot hung weightless in the air or the way she tilted her head just slightly.  Lips, painted a dangerous shade of pink, turned up in the smallest smile.  It took courage, steadied by a deep breath, to look away from her finger as it tapped gently at her chin, to let his gaze travel up.  But when he did search out her eyes, eager to know their color, their shape, to learn if they had wrinkles, or if she wore make up, or if they looked cheerful, or forlorn, or aching for something Simon could give her, he found them fixed steadily on him.

* * *

 

That was, in essence, how he ended up discarded on top of a pile of garbage behind the club.  “On top of” being an overstatement, considering that by the time he was able to take stock of the evening’s events, every little thing that had led him to that moment—likely the lowest moment in his rapidly shortening life—he was already sunken well into the bags.  It’d maybe take only two or three more bags to cover him whole.  At least then he could end the night not just laying amongst the rank refuse of a 24/7 Italian take-out restaurant, (the same place he had ordered from the night before, he realized spitefully), but laying within it.

 _This is probably fitting_ , he thought.  _Should’ve known better._ But his pulse slowed and slowed and slowed and his thoughts gradually followed suit.  It wasn’t necessarily pain he felt.  It hadn’t hurt.  Rather it felt more like an encroaching and overwhelming exhaustion taking over his body.  Something that, on any other day, he would’ve easily been able to bat away with just a couple hours of sleep and a healthy dose of caffeine pumping through his veins.

But there was also a cold, spreading up from his fingertips and toes, snaking up his limbs.  A feeling that nothing was in his body anymore.  Not blood or air.  Not even himself.

He didn’t have a chance to think about though, to ponder how that could even be possible as darkness swallowed his vision whole.

* * *

 

He woke abruptly.  Which was pretty par for the course for him.  He really just wasn’t one of those slow-wakers.  Generally, he’d wake up to a persistent, if dull, sense of meaningless panic that eased away as his mind cleared.  But when he woke up then, it was a little different.  Mainly because he woke up to a hand rubbing at his throat.  The ministrations were far from gentle and in fact, they hurt like hell.  Finger tips rubbed hard into his larynx without anything like finesse.  They only stopped once he swallowed on his own, gulping down a mouthful of some tepid liquid that had pooled in his mouth.

He had to actively fight back the desire to hack and cough and sputter out whatever it was that dripped, itching and slow, into his mouth.  At first he tried to pull away with a weak, abortive turn of his head, but a hand pushed his head back and settled firmly once more against his neck.  At least the fingers ceased their assault on his throat. 

So he did what seemed to be expected of him and with each new swallow, the world around him came back into a sharper, painful focus.  First he saw the arm, hovering just within his field of vision.  Then he saw the mar, an angry dark gash through the center of the forearm, aimed at the vulnerable soft skin of the underside.  A thumb came up to ease against his chin and gently pull his mouth back open.

For a moment his mind faltered as he attempted to understand everything around him.  Was that his arm?  Was he in a hospital?  Was it someone else’s? The questions filtered, seemingly endless until the smell hit him.

The heady, thick smell of blood.  He remembered it from the time his face got intimately acquainted with a row of lockers after a good shove from his least favorite of his revolving door of tormentors.  Blood had dripped steadily from his nose, leaving little splatters on the hallway floor.  All he could do was shut his eyes against the cacophony of laughter as it echoed so cleanly against the walls.  His mother cleaned him up when he got home from school, setting him with a sad look, and she didn’t say anything when he skipped school the next day.  Perhaps she knew he was unable to face Clary with the swollen, purple evidence of his ineptitude staining his face.

He wanted to retch.  Either from the queasy embarrassment of the memory or from the realization that the thick liquid that filled his mouth was indeed blood, he didn’t rightly know.  But then his tongue darted out, lapped almost instinctually at the blood smeared messily across his mouth.

And he wanted to groan with how good it tasted.

“Only a little more,” a voice behind him said.  The fingers that rested against his neck moved, lifting up to brush through his hair.  It was only then that it really hit him that he wasn’t alone.  In fact, he could feel someone behind him, a firm body pressed into his back, perhaps the only thing keeping him semi-upright.  His legs jerked, bare feet slipping across the sheets in attempt to get away that really was failed at its conception. 

The arm lowered and the intention couldn’t have been clearer.  It was just close enough for him to lean up just the slightest bit and lap, tentatively at first, and then gluttonously against the smooth skin.  His lips brushed against the broken flesh and without any need for command or encouragement, he sucked.

The blood that burst into his mouth nearly destroyed him.  It certainly wrested him of whatever cognitive process makes humans human.  Before he could gather anything like sense or self-preservation he grabbed onto the forearm with both of his hands, fingers tightening around the limb.  He yanked it, pulled it, pinned it to the bed before he hunched forward and dug his teeth into the flesh.  They sunk in with such a satisfying ease he almost sighed.

The person behind him hissed, the muscles beneath his fingers tensing as though readying to pull away, so Simon bore down on the limb harder.  But the person didn’t move, just stayed hunched over Simon’s back.  The hand that had been in his hair, massaging soothing circles across his scalp only moments before, came to rest firmly between his shoulder blades.

“I said only a little.”  The person sounded annoyed.  Probably.  Really Simon could barely hear the words, drowned out as they were beneath the heavy pulse of blood beating through his head.  Like a man longing for water in the vast expanse of the desert, he devoured every ounce of blood that he could, desperate to consume as much as possible before suddenly the hand at his back was gone.  He didn’t even have a chance to wonder where it’d gone when it gripped a vicious handful of his hair and promptly yanked him off.

The hand stayed, the painful pull of hair at the top of his skull keeping him an arm’s length away.  For the first time that night, he noticed his companion.  Simon took in the dark hair, the look of mild contempt, the nice shirt with only one sleeve rolled up to the elbow in neatly creased folds.  His eyes wandered down to the wound, dripping with blood as it slowly, very gradually, healed and took away from Simon the only thing on the planet he even wanted.

He reached out for the arm, the gesture weak and pathetic even to his own eyes.  And sure enough the guy scoffed, eliciting a disappointed shame deep in Simon’s gut.  At least until he was shoved, pushed back to the bed by the grip in his hair.  His eyes fluttered shut in relief when the fingers finally loosened their hold.

“Sun’s coming up soon.  Get some sleep.”

And he couldn’t help but obey.

* * *

 

Something woke him up only a couple of hours later.  He groaned and with a wince he squeezed his eyes back shut, rubbing his fingers into them with enough pressure to almost hurt.  Something wasn’t right about that though, as though intuitively he knew the movement shouldn’t have felt so natural.  Which meant something was off.

He didn’t have his glasses. 

Simon skated his fingers across the sheets, desperately searched across the nightstand, dug his hand beneath his pillow.  He was ready to get up, to start pulling blankets off the bed when he realized he wasn’t surrounded by a world of obscure blurs.  Rather, everything he saw was painfully and intensely focused.

He took in his surroundings, uncomfortable with just how much he could see.  The minimalist décor left much to be admired as far as he was concerned.  Nothing like a nice cluttered bedroom to make one feel completely at home.  But what he noticed most was how much the lack of any real adornment was contrasted by the heavy blackout curtains that lined what he realized should have been a wall of windows.  Just beyond them, he could tell the sun had risen and ached to stream past the edges of the fabric, failing to create anything more than faint outlines of light. 

In the week since he had started school he hadn’t once stayed out all night only to find himself woken up in some strange place.  Of course that was the thing for normal college kids to do, but Simon rarely got graced with terms such as “normal.”  Yet there he was. Not only stuck in some strange apartment, but in a strange bed and, just then noticing the soft sound of rustling behind him, also with a strange person.

He stilled then, panic surging up from his chest as he tried frantically to remember the night before, searching for any clues that might indicate not only where he was or what the hell happened, but also who the hell was in bed with him.

Somewhere deep in his memory was Clary, pulling him through the club by his hand.  For a moment the feeling of her palm warm against his own filled him with the purest sense of elation.  The same prickle of contentment he felt whenever she hugged him or playfully punched his arm or leaned her shoulder into his.  But then she let go and waved for him to follow her onto the dance floor.  All he could do was watch as she dissolved into the crowd, moving with them seamlessly.

Then there was the woman.  Slightly older than him.  He could tell from the way she held herself.  Girls his age still battled their confidence and she’d long since conquered hers.  She tugged him from the club with a smile like a viper’s, playing coy right up until she pushed him back against the rough hard brick and kissed him.  Her fingers splayed out against his chest where she pressed, holding him against the wall with an embarrassing amount of strength over him.  She sucked hard, painful bruises into his neck, nipping the skin with almost playful bites before finally clamping down hard and sinking her teeth in.  He tried to call out for help but his voice died before it even reached his lips.  What use were vocal cords after they’d been gnawed away?

And then nothing.

A blank, empty, nothing.

He turned onto his back and chanced a glance at his bed partner, fearful for a moment it might be the woman who’d left him in that alleyway to die.  Perhaps she changed her mind, rounded back and dragged him to her lair, saved him to feast on at a later date like some sort of evil squirrel or something.  But it wasn’t her.  His relief only lasted about two seconds before he processed that the person wasn’t even a woman, but in fact a guy.  A kid to be precise.  At best they could have been the same age but the longer Simon looked at him the less likely that seemed.

His phone buzzed then, muffled and apparently still miraculously in his back pocket.  He reached blindly, pulling it out and squinting against the light as the alarm alerted him with increasingly angry buzzes that his first class of the day was to start in fifteen minutes.

He definitely and completely forgot is was Monday morning.

However, the thought of leaving—of getting out of that bed, walking out of that apartment and finding his way home from wherever the hell he was—felt more and more impossible.  Was he even in the same city still?

Even though he fully expected to be plagued by worry or guilt or fear, somehow none of those feelings surfaced as he canceled his alarm and tossed it onto the bedside table.  All he felt was a whole body ache that reminded him of the time Clary roped him into running a marathon during junior year that he regretted for a week afterwards.  It was only topped by a tiredness that threatened to take over his body and just put it down either for the night or for forever.  Simon didn’t really know which one, nor did he mind one over the other at that moment. 

He sunk back into the bed, the linens of which he was almost certain were more expensive than anything he had laid on in his life.  He pulled the blanket over his head, wondering if it had cost more than his tuition, and burrowed deeper into the dark enclave that for some reason felt infinitely safer than anything out beyond those walls.  The smell was comforting, like it was his own scent, his own bed.  But he only had the vaguest opportunity to be disturbed by that realization before he succumbed to his exhaustion.


	2. Chapter 2

“Dude.”

His roommate, a guy named Mark, stared at him.

Mark’s acknowledgement of Simon wasn’t immediate.  Simon had already slung his jacket onto his bunk—the terrible bottom one—and had been halfway through a vigorous rant about waking up in strange apartments in the Upper East Side in the middle of the night when Mark, at first glued to his laptop’s screen, finally swiveled his desk chair around.

Simon pushed pause his verbal motor, which had a tendency to get a little out of hand when not kept in check, when he saw the look on Mark’s face.  It was a little dazed, mouth sort of slack in what he could only describe as confusion-y disgust.  Strangely enough it was a lot like the looks he got on the subway as he made his way back to campus.

“Did you kill someone?” He asked, only when it became clear that Simon was too busy trying to figure out the reason why Mark was giving him such a weird look to respond to something as articulate as “Dude.”

“What?”

Mark waved his hand in Simon’s general direction.  He still didn’t catch on until he finally glanced down.  He thought maybe he had something on his shirt or something insignificant like that.  Which wasn’t that far off.  Except while he was expecting to find maybe a smudge or splatter, he found instead that his shirt was nearly covered in dried blood.

Simon laughed, the kind of stilted laugh that always bubbled up when he got nervous.  Then he wasn’t laughing at all.  Instead he pulled his shirt off, trying his best to make it look like he was not desperately clawing it off as fast as he could.

“Tripped… and fell right into some mud?”  He wished he could do that thing where it didn’t sound like you don’t believe a word you are saying, but he hadn’t really obtained that skill set yet.

And Mark looked like he didn’t really believe him either.  But that lasted only a split second because then he mostly looked like he just didn’t care.  With a halfhearted shrug and a face that said nothing except “whatever”, he spun back around to his laptop and started typing away at his paper.

“I’m starving,” Simon said as he pulled a fresh shirt from his too tiny closet.  “Do you want to go get something to eat?”

He knew he was starting to tread to that territory of Mark losing complete interest in him.  It was something he did a lot and gradually as the weeks since their move-in date passed, Simon got used to it.  While Simon may have preferred a roommate that actually enjoyed discussing things with him, maybe one that shared his interests in obscure science fiction shows or had any desire to be friends with him, he was also entirely okay with just talking at someone if they didn’t want to talk with him.

But Mark actually acknowledged that he spoke, if only to glance over his shoulder.  “It’s literally 2 A.M.”

“You ordered a pizza at midnight like, just last weeks.”

“That was midnight.  2 A.M. is kind of,” he paused to make a so-so gesture with his hand and Simon gave up on getting him to go along before he could even finish his thought.  Instead he checked his pocket for his wallet, said his farewells and all but sprinted out the door and off to their questionable elevator.

The thing was, he really was starving.  It almost hurt how empty his stomach felt.  Scratch that, it did hurt.  Part of him wondered if it was going to just start digesting itself out of desperation, even if he knew that sounded ridiculous.  He didn’t eat at 2 A.M. most nights.  Hell, he usually wasn’t even awake at 2 A.M., so he didn’t disagree with Mark’s whole stance on the mealtime thing.  But at the same time, there wasn’t a single scenario where he could imagine himself surviving the rest of the night without eating.

And that was how he found himself at the corner diner.  Technically the place had a name, something like Lupe’s Diner or maybe Linda’s Diner or something like that.  It didn’t really matter considering it was known by just about everyone simply as 'the corner diner.'  Which didn’t really make sense since it wasn’t really on a corner (something he had tried to ask about and only got a glare for his troubles.)  At orientation he got to hear all the volunteers rave about it with obsessive love, so it was only a matter of time before he found himself there with Clary and both of their roommates.

Both he and Clary planned little excursion with the hopes of making a little friend group for themselves.  But the lunch ended up more awkward than anything else as Mark had no real interest in chatting with either him or Clary, and focused all his attention on Izzy.  Who in turn just spent the entire meal talking to just about everyone except Mark.  She even had a nice little chat with the person at the table behind theirs when she turned and asked to borrow their ketchup.  Mark left the diner pretty disillusioned and hadn’t been keen on hanging out with them since.

But at 2 A.M., the diner was pretty empty.  Maybe not as empty as most places.  The little deli across the street from the diner, which was his breakfast place, was completely shut off and the street between saw little more than the occasional car passing by.  In the diner, there was a little more life.  A few other students, perhaps kept awake by their noisy neighbors or taking a break from hours of studying sat spread out amongst the chairs and booths, no one really talking to each other above sparse, dazed conversations befitting the dark, early morning hours of a Tuesday.

The wait for his food was nearly unbearable.  As he ordered, he tried his best to make some subtle jokes about how starved he was, how he couldn’t even remember the last time he ate.  But the waitress gave him a look like he was hardly the first person she’d heard those words from, and his borderline begging wasn’t going to magically make food cook faster.

When it finally arrived though, she’d barely set it down on the uneven table before he was ripping his fork out of the napkin and digging into his meat loaf and mash potatoes with the same amount of finesse as a lion butchering a gazelle.

The waitress lingered behind, asking if he needed anything else with a disgusted expression he was starting to get used to.  Which wasn't a great feeling.  But he smiled around his mouthful of food, shaking his head before focusing back on consuming as much food as he possibly could to ease away that empty, clawing ache that had been settled in his stomach since the moment he woke up.

About half way through his plate, he started to feel it.  Or rather, he started to realize he wasn’t feeling it.  But at that point he was already well-versed with the crash course in denial he was enjoying the last day or so.  It wasn't much of a core to push that realization back and continue to eat and eat and eat, longing for that feeling of being full to return to him.

But once he was faced with his completely empty plate, every crumb scraped up with his fork and knife, all but licked clean... he couldn’t push back the horror of having to acknowledge that his stomach was still just as empty as his plate.

He almost wanted to cry, ready to wave the waitress back over and order more when someone sat down across from him.  He didn’t look up, thinking maybe Mark had decided to catch up with him, a notion soundly snuffed out when he heard the person speak.

“Still hungry?”

He sighed.  Too frustrated and tired and hungry to run away screaming.  “I thought I got rid of you.”

“You know, sneaking out when I was out of the apartment is hardly ‘getting rid of.’  It’s not like you were a prisoner.”

“You kidnapped me.”

“Can you really kidnap a dead person?”

“I wasn’t—.” He leant forward, lowering his voice meaningfully.  “I wasn’t dead.”

Raphael didn’t bother to lower his voice, but he did lean forward, if only a little bit.  “You were dead.”

“Stop saying that.”

As if the waitress were some kind of angel, she took that moment to waltz up and top off his coffee.

“Is there anything I can get you?” She addressed it to both of them, setting the pot down and pulling out her little notepad from her apron in preparation.  Raphael shook his head no.  But he kept his eyes locked on Simon like he might burst out some kind of confession to the woman.  Part of him wanted to, wanted to start raving about how some guy who dressed like a music producer kidnapped him and tried to convince him he was a vampire.  Someone needed to know.

“Yeah, actually,” he smiled at her apologetically.  “Can I get another order of the same?”

Her eyebrows hitched in surprised, but she didn’t let it bother her for long as she scrawled something on her pad.  She walked off with a promise his food would be out soon.

“You know that’s not going to do anything for you.  We already discussed this,” he finally spoke up once she was out of earshot.

“Well excuse me if I’m not really on track with the whole, believing a kidnapper who is trying to tell me I’m some kind of vamp--." He bit his words off as a guy came over and cleared off the table of his old plate. Hopefully he was used to the whole thing where people get suddenly quiet when an employee comes over.  Simon thought he might actually recognize him from one of his classes, which was all the more incentive to shut up.

When he finally looked back at Raphael, he found himself greeted by a steady, unimpressed stare.  Without breaking his gaze, Raphael blindly yanked a napkin out of the dispenser and laid it flat out on the table.  He pulled a pen from god knows where in his jacket and finally looked away to write something out on the napkin.

He slid out of the booth with slightly more grace than Simon had ever really seen someone accomplish and stood up, taking the napkin with him.  For a moment, Simon felt too curious about what he wrote down, but then Raphael slapped it down on the table in front of him.  It was an address, he realized.

“Come see me when you get over yourself,” he said, and then he just left.  Not before giving Simon’s shoulder a painful pat-and-squeeze combo before waltzing off, leaving him with nothing more than the ring of the door’s little bell to tell him he’d left.  For a split second he had some weird gut driven urge to follow after him, which was an instinct he felt determined to rid of.

But he didn’t have to think about it for long as his second round of food finally came.  He swiped the napkin away and shoved it in his pocket before she could set the plate down on top of it and with feeling that he was just embarking on a useless endeavor, he picked up his fork.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder that I'm on [tumblr](http://ossseous.tumblr.com) and always open to prompts/suggestions.


	3. Chapter 3

Mark’s alarm went off around seven in the morning.  The obnoxious whistling tone repeated over and over until he finally woke up and, to Simon’s relief, he turned it off.  That alarm was likely the thing that Simon hated the most about Mark.  Of course there were many things to dislike about the guy.  But even if he knew it wasn’t Mark’s fault and that the alarm actually doubled as his own, the alarm won out without contest.  Mark's less endearing habits, things like crunching on his chips as loud as possible or furiously clicking his computer’s mouse when he was gaming, all seemed like minor inconveniences when--in the bleary moments of first waking to that incessant tone--all Simon could think about was how much Mark apparently intended to make sure he never got to sleep in in the morning.

Before he moved into the dorm, he had always been more of a morning person.  Part of that had to do with the fact his mother always woke him up at the crack of dawn so he wouldn’t miss his bus.  But without her there to knock on his door frame in the evening and remind him he had to wake up early in the morning, he gradually started to slip.  As if it were some kind of messed up game of how much he could make his life more and more difficult, he found himself going to bed later and later.  A tragic tale beset upon most freshmen just freshly moved out of their homes.  It was evident that Simon wasn’t an exception.

But that morning was different.  As Mark grumbled and commenced his morning ritual of hacking away mucous and clambering ungracefully down from his bunk, Simon couldn’t even pull the blanket off from over his head to join him.  Beyond the muffling layers of fiberfill and polyester blend he could hear the sounds of Mark gathering his stuff to take a shower.  He wasn’t really quiet about it after all.  As the door shut and locked behind him, Simon felt truly and entirely blessed to be in a quiet, empty room.  At that moment, falling back to sleep wasn’t even a question.  After the second meal the night before, he didn’t really try to go all out on a third one.  Mostly because his wallet was the furthest thing from bottomless.  But perhaps some small part of his decision to quit was because Raphael’s words bounced around the back of his thoughts, warning him about the pointlessness of his attempts.  What was that quote about insanity being when you do the same thing over and over while expecting different results?

Nonetheless, he didn’t make it back to the dorm until after four had passed and the sun was already beginning its threat to rise.  It made the sky gradually turn a lighter blue off on the small bit of horizon he could see between the buildings that cut into the sky, and something that once may have been a thing of beauty to him just filled him with some unfounded sense of dread. 

By the time he stumbled back, still hungry and aching, Mark had already fallen asleep.  It was something Simon hadn’t actually witnessed in the time since they moved in, always having been the first to fall asleep and the last to wake.  But he could hardly even pause to consider the weirdness of that fact before he crashed into his bunk and passed out.

So really, waking up after approximately three odd hours of sleep seemed impossible and only a sadist would expect him to be able to do so.

And he was just on the verge of drifting back off to sleep when Mark came back from his shower and, apparently having seen Simon immobile and still in bed, took some pity on him and nudged him back into the world of the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with his foot.

“Don’t you have a morning class?” He asked, his voice a little further away than Simon expected it to be.  He heard the telltale signs of a backpack’s zipper being yanked open as papers and notebooks and textbooks were shoved into its waiting mouth without ceremony.

“Yes,” he groaned, full of regret and self-pity and agonizing loathing.  Loathing for himself or the world around him, he didn’t really know.

But eventually, knowing he couldn’t put it off any longer, he shoved his blanket off and kicked it down to the foot of the bed.

Which he regretted even more than the time he was first struck with the uncomfortable realization that he had naively signed up only for morning classes at the beginning of the semester.

The room was too bright, like, painfully bright.  Like right after a trip to the optometrist where every step out those doors without those hideous plastic film sunglasses was a step towards a world of agony.  He scurried up, squinting against the sun as he fumbled with the blinds in embarrassing, clumsy desperation.  He finally got them shut and he paused in horror as he realized Mark was probably still in the room. 

He turned slowly, hoping that he had something like a reservoir of luck or even a fairy godmother looking after him that would make it so that Mark left before his whole knee-jerk spasm escapade thing.

But he had neither.  He carefully looked to Mark, only to find him sending Simon the same kind of “what the fuck” look he had given him the night before when he returned to the room covered in blood.  He played it off like it was mud or something but for all his apathy, Mark wasn't stupid.

“My eyes are… really sensitive?”

There was a moment of complete and utter silence where Simon imagined he must have greatly resembled a deer in headlights, hand still stretched out toward to the blinds, as he waited for Mark’s response.

“Whatever dude.  I’m heading out.”

Or lack of one.

Mark just slung his backpack over his shoulder and coasted out of the room, locking the door once again behind him.

Once he heard the little click, Simon allowed himself only a moment for a sigh of relief before he turned and yanked their little curtain closed as well.  He nearly dislodging the tension rod from the window frame in his haste.  It didn’t provide much more relief, but it was better than nothing.

He got dressed, accepting the fact that he was going to have to skip his shower that morning.  He didn’t feel too bad considering how many unwashed students regularly graced his classes with their presence.  As he loaded up his own backpack, he tried to think of ways to convince mark he wasn’t on drugs or something.  The whole getting blasted in the face with a window full of sunlight did help to wake him up though, if only a little.  He grabbed a baseball cap and some sunglasses as he headed out the door.  It veered a little too close to Unabomber fashion for his tastes, but it’d have to do until he found another solution.

He could tell he was running late the second he ambled out the front doors.  Only a few people wandered around, perhaps on their way to the cafeteria or to the library or something.  Clearly the class-bound students had already arrived at their destinations, freeing up the sidewalks of congestion.  In fact, it was a little unnerving, being able to walk without worrying if someone zipping by on a skateboard or a bicycle was going to mow him down.

Too tired to run, he settled for a meaningful stride as he tugged the brim of his hat down to better shield his eyes.

 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of short, mainly because this was originally going to be one big chapter with the next one, but I ended up deciding to split it in two. So hopefully the second half will be coming up in the near future as it’s already been started. 
> 
> Also, blah blah blah im on [tumblr](http://ossseous.tumblr.com), come talk to me about saphael and shadowhunters and stuff.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a while, semester was kind of overwhelming, didn't get much non-academic writing done like, at all. But! Semesters over, so hopefully more writing time this month.

“Did you get sick or something?”

Clary eyed him as he dropped into his usual spot at her side.  Izzy mirrored her expression almost perfectly just beyond her shoulder.  Since the beginning of the semester they had managed to hold onto the three seats closest to the door.  They were prime spots for sneaking in late, something that one of them always seemed to do.

But in that moment, Simon could hardly even notice the rest of the room.  He could see though that even though he was late as hell, he still wasn’t as late as their professor.  Maybe he did have some luck on his side, though considering it was far from the first time she had lagged, he wasn’t too surprised.

Clary shifted in her seat.  She looked like an uncomfortable cocktail of worried and anxious and concerned and a bunch of other emotions he never wanted her to feel.  With hesitance, he took off the sunglasses, letting them clatter onto the desk and tried his best to muster up a bunch of confidence that he wasn’t exactly feeling.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  He gave her a grin, squaring his shoulders against the empty ache that was still gnawing away at his stomach.  Clary smiled back and he hoped his was a little more convincing than hers.

“Well, you missed class yesterday and to be honest you look a little…” she trailed off, giving him a cursory once over drenched in concern.

“There seems to be a consensus on that that lately,” he mumbled, pulling his notebook from his backpack before dropping it onto the floor at his feet.  On the other side of Clary, Izzy leaned forward to get a better look at him from under his cap, squinting.  He didn’t really want to know how clammy he must have looked.

“She’s not wrong,” she said, resting her cheek on the heel of her palm as she spun her pen between her fingers.  “I didn’t know you had contacts…”

He opened his mouth.  He was intent on asking her what she meant, but before a sound could even come out, the professor hurried in and dropped her materials in a heap on the desk.  The cacophony of conversations dulled to whispers as she logged onto the computer and gave some breathless greetings.  Izzy leaned back in her seat as the powerpoint flashed onto the screen.

If someone asked him later what the class had been about, he wouldn’t have been able to string a single sentence together describing the topic.  He knew the teacher was talking, he saw the other students raise their hands, talk, write and write and type and type, but he didn’t hear a single word.  Instead his thoughts wandered.

Wandered to the hunger that still ate away at his stomach as it slowly etched its way up into his chest.  At some point he had almost started to feel used to that emptiness.  But there was a nagging longing for something else.  That sharp coppery tang, the warm slip of his lips over blood-wet skin.

“Simon!”

He jolted up.  Clary stood, backpack slung over one shoulder a few steps away.  Izzy stood halfway to the door apparently mid-stride when she had stopped and turned.  He focused back Clary, tried to bite back at the nausea that crept through him at the concern she didn't bother hiding.

“I’ve been saying your name for like, five minutes,” she said, taking a step towards him.

“Sorry,” he shook his head like he could shake those lingering thoughts away.  The thoughts that made him think he could smell that one thing he wanted most.  Looking down at his notebook he saw the few illegible, nonsensical scribbles called “notes” he had taken.  He didn’t even remember picking up his pen, but there it sat loose in his lax grip.  He hurried to shove his stuff back into his own backpack, looking back up to Clary, hopeful that static of worry had ebbed away.  No such luck.

“You don’t look that great,” she said.  She put her hand on his bag to keep him from standing, leaving, making the obvious hasty escape he longed to make.

 _I don’t feel that great_ , he thought.  But instead of letting those words tumble out like he so often did, he just gave her a smile.  “I’m fine, Clary.  Just didn’t get much sleep last night.  Halo with Mark… lost track of time.”

Her expression shifted.  Maybe if he hadn’t known her for so long, he wouldn’t have noticed it.  But it wasn’t a good shift.  Not entirely convinced, she at least pulled her hand away.

“Meet me in the caf for lunch?” She wasn’t as good at hiding the reluctance in her voice.  She took a step backwards, hand clutched in her backpack’s strap like it was some sort of lifeline that could pull Simon back to her.  Some big part of him wanted her to pull him back, a desire he tamped back.

“Yeah, definitely.”

* * *

 

His stomach growled.  Angry and loud enough that Clary looked up from her own tray and laughed a little.  If anything it seemed to break the tension that had settled between them in the last few hours.  He would take what he could get.

“When was the last time you ate?” She asked.  She shoved a straw in her cup, the whistle of plastic rubbing against plastic almost unbearable.  He had to grit his teeth and looked away from her plate.  It sat between them, half picked at in boredom from the stale silence that had taken root the second they caught a table.

“Last night,” he admitted.  “I don’t have much of an appetite.”

It was a lie.  Looking down at his Styrofoam tray filled with heaps of less than healthy food, he wanted nothing more than to eat.  Appetite wasn’t the problem.  He understood what a dog felt like when it’s owner dangled a steak right in front of its face, only to slide it back on the counter and out of reach.

But he just couldn’t handle the thought of eating all that food and still feeling nothing.

He slid his own tray towards her and she frowned, amusement fading away as she eyed it.  She slipped back into that concern he’d seen in the classroom.  The kind of expression he never wanted to be responsible for, particularly when it came to Clary.  She reached out, picked at the corner of the tray.  But it didn’t move, she didn’t push it back, didn’t slide it closer.

“Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“Maybe.”  He ran a hand over his ribs, as though he could feel the muscles in his stomach contracting and massage some kind of relief into them.  Even if he knew that was impossible, anything that might abate that ache was worth a try.

“I’ll get someone to cover for you during roll call if you go,” she added, full of nothing but hope that he’d take the offer.

* * *

He ducked into an alley way, pulling his cap off to let his head just… breathe.  Up above the clouds shifted, rolling across the sky with ease, parting enough to let heavy rays of sun beat down onto the asphalt.  Although he was certain he must have been imagining it, he could have sworn he could hear the soft sizzle of heat.

But it had to have been a trick, a hunger induced hallucination, something reasonable.  After all, the high for the day wasn’t even meant to reach 80 degrees.  Hardly sizzle worthy.

But the rough brick scratching along his palms was cold to the touch, a thankful relief to whatever warm hell was out waiting for him on the sidewalk.  So, he allowed himself a moment to rest, to lean back, to sink down to the ground and let his eyes drift shut.

The respite didn’t last for long.  The soft scuff of shoes stopping right in front of him jolted every inch of relaxed muscle into a sharp tension as his eyes snapped right back open.

Raphael stood in front of him.  Simon had met his fair share of unimpressed people in his life, all of them seemingly unimpressed with him in particular.  His mom, his middle school principal, the kids in gym class, his college adviser...  But nothing quite compared to the look of disgust, disdain, derision he found himself met with.

“What the hell?” He swiped the sweat from his forehead before he smashed his cap back onto his head.  “How did you find me?”

“I could hear your heartbeat the second you got off the subway.”

Simon looked up once more, waiting to see if it was some kind of joke.  Though he wasn’t entirely sure how he would’ve been able to tell with someone like Raphael.  “Yeah, that’s totally normal.”

Raphael shrugged, unbothered.  “Rabbits have slower heart rates than you do.”

“Well I’m sorry, I got lost, okay?”

Raphael looked around at the ally and gave him a look like he didn’t believe him.  But it wasn’t like Clary’s distrust, fixed with that undercurrent of genuine concern and pity, so tangible Simon could almost feel it with every track her eyes made over his face.  Always in search of the truth.  No, it was more like annoyance.  Annoyance that he wasn’t a better liar, or annoyance that Simon would even try to get away with lying to him in the first place, he didn’t know.

He got himself to stand nonetheless, glaring over at Raphael as he made it to his feet.  He didn’t look anywhere near as messed up as Simon felt, which he was certain was unfair.  “Why do you look fine and I look like…” he just gestured to himself.

Raphael shrugged again.  “Because I’m older.”

Well that was a non-answer.  He watched as Raphael turned and without even looking behind, left the alley.  Like he knew full well that Simon would trail after.  And Simon hated the part of him, deep in his thoughts, that whispered for him to follow.  He hated his legs even more for actually listening.

* * *

He didn’t get a great look at the apartment before he rushed out in those early morning hours.  The second he thought Raphael was far enough away he had all but bolted out the door and hadn't bothered to take it all in.  It had still been dark, early enough in the morning that the sun hadn’t even thought about inching into the sky.  But he couldn't help but notice that, even half way to dawn, all the lights in the apartment were on.  The various lamps and recess lights and overhead lights filling every inch of the place in a soft, warm light.

Raphael dropped the keys on the foyer table like some kind of normal person as Simon shut the door behind him.  Aas they made it further into the apartment, he found the place nearly pitch black, all except the light from the range hood that flooded the kitchen.  That was where Raphael led him, wordless with an impatient tension to his shoulders.  When Simon finally ventured a look to his face, he found Raphael eyeing him, clearly telling him to stay put as he rounded the island.

He obeyed that wordless command, drumming his fingers on the butcher block as Raphael popped open the fridge.

He wasn’t ready for what Raphael pulled out.  He didn't think any sane person would have been.  A person should never look that casual while pulling a blood bag out of a fridge, he thought.  But the sight of it was uncomfortably welcomed.  The plastic clouding as it hit the warmer air of the kitchen, heavy with deep red blood.  Raphael tossed it onto the counter between them and his stomach churned in queasy hunger.

“That’s not my blood type,” he joked, mouth dry as he eyed the big block letter O on the label.

“It is now.”

It took a second, trying to get what he meant.  Then he realized: It was Raphael’s blood in him now.  He wondered whose blood was in Raphael.

He swallowed.  He may have been joking a moment before, but Raphael obviously was not going to joke about anything.  The whole situation was going on the list of things he was becoming less and less okay with.

Raphael turned away and pulled a glass from a cabinet before pulling a pair of kitchen shears from a drawer.

“This can’t be happening,” he muttered, mostly to himself.  He could feel the saliva pooling in his mouth as Raphael finally turned back around and—without any sort of preamble—snipped a corner off the bag.  He tipped its contents into the glass with care.

Simon's breath escaped him a rush and he backed away from the counter, stumbling over his own feet as he retreated blindly away from everything.  _Hospital_ , he told himself, over and over.  _I need to go to a hospital.  This guy is crazy._

And he shouldn’t have looked.  He knew he shouldn’t have looked.  Shouldn’t have searched out Raphael’s eyes on some base instinct driving him to act.

“Come back here,” he said, voice edgeless and apathetic as he popped the glass in the microwave and hit the thirty seconds button.

“I can’t do this,” he said.  His own voice sounded pleading but he didn’t even know what he was begging for.  A different life maybe.  A chance to go back and make everything different.

But he stepped closer nonetheless, making his way back to the island with hesitance.  Silence stretched out and those thirty seconds felt like hours crawling by.  At least until the jarring beeps from the microwave signaled both that it was done heating up his blood and that he was steadily approaching a point of no return.

He shut his eyes tight.  Braced his hands against the counter until the skin stretching over his knuckles hurt.  When he dared to open his eyes back up, the glass was sitting right in front of him.

He had to make a decision.

“No,” he whispered.

“You need it.”

“I think you are being a little subjective here.”

“I’m not.”

“Can’t I just go to a hospital?  They—”

“Just.  Drink it.”  Raphael gritted the words out between clenched teeth.  His expression seeped into something other than annoyance or apathy, the only emotions he thought Raphael was capable of feeling.  But here was a whole new Raphael emotion to deal with.  Anger.

Not too keen on pushing that anger to the limits, he obeyed.  He reached out with an unsteady hand, pulling the glass closer before lifting it up.  With one fortifying breath, he tilted the glass back, and he drank.

He could only shut his eyes in relief as he took in the first swallow.  The warmth spilling into him, blooming somewhere in his chest, deep behind his ribs... it felt transcendental.  Sound washed out beyond the dull roar of his own pulse thrumming almost too loudly in his ears.

The roar of silence suddenly washed away as he emptied the glass and set it numbly back on the counter.

He felt a touch then, surprisingly gentle.  A hand, he realized, and not his own.  The slight pressure of fingers smoothing over his chin, scraping up his neck, wiping away the silky wet of blood that had dribbling down in his haste to drink as much as he could as fast as he could.

He didn’t even know when Raphael had rounded the counter, and try as he might, he couldn’t focus on him beyond the blur of euphoria that threatened with every passing second to overcome him.

“Good job.”

And it sounded so genuine he almost wanted to cry.  In order to spare himself the humiliation of doing just that, he shut his eyes once more and leaned into the touch.


End file.
